Peter Ricchiuti (pronounced ri-shooty) is the business school professor the executives and managers from Acadiana’s Top 50 Privately Held Companies will wish they had back in college. He teaches courses on the financial markets at Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business, and his insight and humor have twice made him the school’s top professor.
Ricchiuti started his career with the investment firm of Kidder Peabody and later managed more than $3 billion as the assistant treasurer for the state of Louisiana. In 1993 he founded Tulane’s highly acclaimed Burkenroad Reports stock research program, which covers public companies generally under-followed by Wall Street. His student researchers provide investors an opportunity to take a look at these companies before they are discovered by other investors. Since the program's inception, 22 of the companies Ricchiuti and his students followed have been acquired. Read more about Burkenroad and the local companies it follows here.
Ricchiuti has been featured on CNN and CNBC as well as in The New York Times, BARRON’S, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. Over the past 20 years, the prof has addressed hundreds of groups in 47 states and several countries, presenting to a wide variety of audiences. He has also conducted workshops for the New Orleans Saints.
To get Ricchiuti’s intriguing take on the state and local economy, be at the Cajundome Convention Center, Thursday, Sept. 1, from noon -1:30. He’s the keynote speaker for this year’s Top 50 Privately Held Companies luncheon. Presenting sponsors are Whitney Bank and Allen & Gooch law firm. VIP parking sponsor is Rob Eddy and The Pinnacle Group, and supporting sponsor is Acadiana Economic Development Council.
The Top 50 list and analysis, along with profiles of seven companies that made the cut this year, will be published as a cover story in the July-August issue of ABiz, which hits newsstands Wednesday. Particularly fitting for this year's keynote speaker, this annual feature also lists publicly traded companies headquartered in Acadiana; Ricchiuti's address will include his outlook for those companies as well.
Tickets go on sale today. Individual tickets are $50; reserved premium tables of eight are $450 and available by contacting Robin Hebert at 337-769-8603 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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